David Cameron has moved into this £16 million mansion after leaving 10 Downing Street

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In a plush part of west London where Holland Park turns into Notting Hill, a team of armed police officers stand guard. They arrived last night in a flurry of activity, driving the red response cars of the Diplomatic Protection Group.

They've been hanging around on the front doorstep of Tony Blair's place off the Edgware Road for almost a decade. But now they've moved on to protect David Cameron in his new digs - a £16m mansion owned by a family friend.

As sudden falls from grace go, landing in a luxury mansion will have softened the blow. And the neighbourhood isn;t too bad either - the average house price is more than £6m in this part of town.

One of Mr Cameron's new neighbours, who asked to remain anonymous, said she didn't know anything about the move until last night.

"There are some people around here who are up their own ****" but I don't think the Camerons are like that. They're relaxed and chilled people.

"It's a very family friendly street. There's a lot of children around here, Im sure we'll be looking out for them too."

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On Cameron's resignation, the neighbour - who voted for Brexit - added: "When you're the leader of a team you have to take responsibility for the team, you can't say one thing and then jump ship. Cameron had to stand down or it would have looked like a bit of a dictatorship."

The Sainsburys live around here, and Robbie Williams used to. Apparently Madona once tried to buy a house but was unsuccessful...

The house opposite the Camerons has been a building site for two and a half years and will only be finished in May next year.

Earlier, when Mr Cameron emerged from behind the Number 10 door, into a gathering storm and under the usual whirr of the helicopters, his wife Samantha and their three children came out too, as Gordon Brown's had done. A first full exposure for little lives nonetheless lived under the glare of the public spotlight. Florence Cameron, not yet six, knows no other life, no other home than this, the grandest one of all. She had once, he said, when dad was off on a foreign trip, climbed into his red box and said, "Take me with you."

Via The Independent

It was hard, in such circumstances, not to think of the fourth child, Ivan, who died in 2009. His ghostly presence a reminder of other ghosts that lurked. His godparents, Michael Gove and Steve Hilton, who had done so much to sabotage the life of their friend. And their country too, it is now so plainly obvious. One had the unswerving zeal of the reformist. The other had a book to sell. Both depart the scene with little success and even less dignity.

"It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve our country as Prime Minister over these last six years," he said, his voice never cracking in the way it had done on that rarefied morning not yet three weeks ago, "And to serve as leader of my party for almost eleven years."

It was a show of great dignity. The great class act in public life for more than decade. But he leaves his country in the thrall of its greatest crisis in generations. And he leaves his party back in the thrall of the paleolithic forces from which he once rescued it.

Via The Independent

As the door of the Prime Ministerial jaguar clicked shut, the kids following on behind, the gates of Downing Street swung open and a loud chorus of boos rang out.

All political careers end in failure, it is often said. Certainly the successful ones do. But rarely as brutal or as total as this. The consequences, though not yet clear, are profound and inevitable. And none more certain than the arrival, on foot, two and half hours later, of an ambulant barrel under a mess of blonde hair, walking in the other direction, and heading through that same old door.